Con­sumer warn­ing is­sued over NewLeaf but air­line calls it an opin­ion

The Con­sumers’ As­so­ci­a­tion of Canada has is­sued a con­sumer alert over is­sues with dis­count air car­rier NewLeaf Travel Com­pany and Flair Airlines Inc.

The alert said Cana­di­ans have been forced to deal with ar­bi­trary can­cel­la­tions and al­ter­ations to flight dates and times on thou­sands of tick­ets pur­chased through NewLeaf on flights op­er­ated by Flair.

Flights out of Hamil­ton to Hal­i­fax and ser­vice from Hamil­ton air­port to the Or­lando area are among the trips that have been can­celled.

The as­so­ci­a­tion urged those buy­ing NewLeaf tick­ets to have an al­ter­nate plan to reach their des­ti­na­tion or to re­turn home.

The alert asked con­sumers to con­sider whether the sav­ings of buy­ing cheap tick­ets war­ranted the risk of be­ing stranded.

NewLeaf said it has never been con­tacted by the as­so­ci­a­tion, and calls the alert an opin­ion.

It did ac­knowl­edge its de­ci­sion in Jan­uary to can­cel ser­vice to Mesa, Ariz., and Mel­bourne, Fla., but said those cus­tomers got a com­plete re­fund for their tick­ets.

“Af­ter just six months of oper­a­tion, NewLeaf Travel Com­pany along with Flair Airlines has suc­cess­fully trans­ported more than 150,000 pas­sen­gers across the coun­try,” said Julie Rem­pel, NewLeaf’s direc­tor of com­mu­ni­ca­tions and mar­ket­ing.

“It is un­clear why an or­ga­ni­za­tion, who again has never con­tacted NewLeaf to gain an un­der­stand­ing of the facts, would choose and try to dam­age our rep­u­ta­tion.”